Humpty Dumpty
by The-Fickle-Lady
Summary: The messed up thing is the nursery rhyme never said Humpty Dumpty was an egg. England supposes the actual story is a bit too chilling for kids.


Axis Powers: Hetalia

Humpty Dumpty.

Disclaimer: I Own Nothing

Summary: The messed up thing is that the nursery rhyme never said Humpty Dumpty was an egg.

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England looked up and smiled at the pristine cloudless blue sky. It was warm out too, which he was glad for after the damp coldness of the last few weeks. Thank god the rainy months were coming to an end, England thought as he continued his stroll down a London sidewalk, lazily swinging a brief case filled with documents and a bag of Indian take-out food at his sides. He had it all planned out in his head. He'd stroll home to his apartment on Baker street, lock himself away in his study, throw open the windows and let the sun and the warm air in, and enjoy some curry while he read over the agenda for the next world meeting and his notes from previous meetings in preparation of it. Yes, it would be a wonderful afternoon, England was sure.

He passed a little girl sitting on her front stoop with a large book in her lap as he approached the final corner before Baker street. England gave the girl a polite nod as he passed and she waved in return before looking down at her book and flipping the page. Her face lit up like a freshly struck match.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and Humpty Dumbty had a great fall." The girl recited the familiar words laughingly, enjoying the rhyme on her lips. England felt a cold chill run down his spine and he halted in his steps momentarily. The girl continued cheerfully. "All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again." From there, she recited what had been added to the rhyme in recent years to give children the happy ending they so desired for the poor little egg who fell off a wall.

England wondered darkly as he started walking again if the little girl would ever realize the rhyme never once called Humpty Dumpty an egg.

He wondered what it would be like when that day came. Would she think nothing of it and leave it alone, remaining blissfully arrogant for the rest of her days? Or would curiosity get the better of her? Turning the corner, England imagined the girl, some years grown of course, typing the words "the origins of Humpty Dumpty" into a search engine on her computer or maybe her phone and clicking a link at the top or near it.

Grimly, England imagined her surprise at finding Humpty Dumpty was not some fable about an egg, but rather the petname of a cannon. A large cannon that sat high upon a wall during the English Civil War, a behemoth of pure dread who breathed black gunpowder and shot raining death and destruction from its mouth, not some goofy egg sucking a lolly who lost its balance. The girl's childhood may take a blow from that, England supposed, depending on how she took the new information. She may find it interesting and pass along the tidbit later as a harmless bit of trivia, or perhaps she would find it horrifying if she thought on it hard enough.

England remembered the day Humpty Dumpty fell. He was the only person alive to do so.

The civil war was a dark time, England remembered. Throughout the whole ordeal, England had felt divided in every way possible, from his loyalties to his basic sense of self. Over the conflict-ridden years, England had often pondered how he would come out of the situation. Would he change considerably? Or none at all even? England did much of his thinking atop the walls of the crown loyalist city he was forced to stay in during the war. His King didn't want him falling into the hands of the enemy, so England didn't do much or any fighting during the war. He just sat atop that wall overlooking the countryside and thought long and hard on the terrible mess he had somehow found himself in the middle of.

There were some days he wasn't allowed up on the wall however, like the day before Humpty's fall.

There was a battle outside the city walls. The enemy had marched upon the city at dawn and fought just outside its gates and at the foot of its walls until they beat a hasty retreat near dusk. They couldn't make camp outside the city walls. Not with Humpty Dumpty leering over them like the great demon it was.

Not that they hadn't done everything in their power to get rid of the beast during their attempted siege.

England had spent that day locked up in his chambers in a tower, listening to the clashing of swords worse than thunder and the sinister sigh of arrows arching downwards in the air and over the city walls, and by the time he was released from the tower, he had felt half-mad. He walked the city streets that night with a lantern, taking in the damage. Within the city walls, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. A few dozen dead civilians due to arrows, a hundred dead soldiers from the battlefield beyond the walls, and several archers and gunmen from atop the walls had been lost. It was nothing compared to the carnage England had witnessed in the past.

The true casualty was Humpty Dumpty. He was the straw, or rather the boulder that broke the camel's back.

The enemy had employed cannon-fire of their own and had concentrated a great deal of it on the section of wall Humpty Dumpty occupied deliberately. The fruits of their efforts however were not born until the next day when the entire city was awoken by a thunderous crash that shook the ground and caused a plethora of screams. England arrived on the scene shortly along with most of the city to see that the wall had collapsed into a mountain of rubble, burying their dear Humpty Dumpty along with several soldiers and builders sent to inspect the damage in its broken bricks and beams. Almost immediately, citizens of the city started to pack their things and begin to flee, certain Humpty Dumpty's apparent demise and the loss of a whole section of wall meant certain defeat the next time the enemy came around, which would be soon no doubt.

The soldiers and builders and even all the blacksmiths, as well as their families, were forced to stay behind under threat of execution or imprisonment. The soldiers were put on high alert and the builders were told to inspect the rest of the city walls for damage while the blacksmiths prepared to repair any damage to Humpty Dumpty once the people who remained in the city were finished digging it out of the rubble. Unfortunately, unearthing Humpty Dumpty only confirmed the fears of those who fled earlier in the day.

Humpty Dumpty was more than cracked or chipped or even dented as the rulers of the city might have hoped. No, the giant cannon was broken into a million pieces, those pitch black pieces intermixed among the rubble. England remembered the utter horror on one city official's face when he heard the news. He had floundered for words for several minutes before putting his fist down and ordering the citizens of the town to find the missing pieces and put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and quickly.

Much to his even greater horror, no one who could help it adhered to his wishes. Whole families fled the city within an hour of Humpty Dumpty's unearthing. Even blacksmiths and builders who had been put under threat of death, and even most soldiers and some city officials. The city was left populated only by the most loyal soldiers and officials and other citizens, with the exception of looters pillaging the now abandoned houses for things left behind. It was that faithful and brave lot who became the infamous "King's horse and King's men" in the rhyme. England had stood alongside them. He could have moved on with the others and no one likely would have stopped him due to circumstances, but standing with the bravest of his people had always appealed to England more than running away with the most frightened.

Together, they gathered the remains of Humpty Dumpty in the main plaza of the city, piece by piece, until they had what seemed like all of it. Throughout the day and into the next, they tried to put Humpty Dumpty together again, if not for this city but to at least take to another city so it could continue its job as both a terrible thorn in the enemy's side and a blessing to the people of the city it was protecting. However, as the song goes, they couldn't put him back together again. It was an impossible task.

Humpty Dumpty was too broken and none of them had the expertise to have done much good even if that hadn't been quite the case. When acceptances finally consumed them all, one by one, down to the last youthful soldier and wrinkled old seamstress, they took the broken pieces and some old wooden beams from the wall rubble and made a bonfire. They all watched Humpty Dumpty burn and melt into the late afternoon, roasting meat over the flames to make one last final good use of the cannon for the people of the city before the flames died and all was left was molten metal to be salvaged by soldiers and civilians about to flee the city at last, leaving the rest for the enemy when they finally came again.

England fled the city by horseback that evening as the sun began to go down. He was escorted by a city official and two soldiers to a newborn refugee camp not too far away. Others recently departed from the city trickled into the city as well and sat around camp fires with former neighbors that had already been at the camp for a few days now. It was around those fire pits that the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty was first conceived.

Hundreds of years later, England still didn't get where down the line someone decided the story must have been about an egg.

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed this! Please read and review! **


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